Now, Syracuse Guard Restricts Clashes to the Court

BOSTON — Everything should come easily for Syracuse guard Dion Waiters. His knack for scoring makes him a projected top 20 pick in the N.B.A. draft. His chiseled frame, with 4 percent body fat, looks genetically engineered to play professional basketball. Waiters has a blazing first step, an uncanny ability to make difficult shots and a confident aura on the court.

But during his two years at Syracuse, nothing has been easy for Waiters. He has played matador defense, clashed with Coach Jim Boeheim and led the Big East in bad body language. He arrived at Syracuse overweight, defensively ambivalent and overwhelmed by the demands of both college and college basketball. The only thing that appeared certain about Waiters’s freshman year was that it would end with his leaving Syracuse.

But with top-seeded Syracuse one game from the Final Four as it faces off with No. 2 Ohio State on Saturday, Waiters has emerged as the Orange’s most dangerous player.

“He’s by far the best scorer I think we’ve faced this year,” said the Ohio State assistant coach Jeff Boals.

Waiters is also one of the N.C.A.A. tournament’s most confident and complicated characters. In three days in Boston, he has compared himself to a caged lion, disparaged Wisconsin’s top-ranked defense as easy to solve and set a timetable for when he will decide on declaring for the N.B.A. draft.

“After we win the championship, that’s when I’ll make my decision,” Waiters said.

That swagger comes from growing up in South Philadelphia, where Waiters was raised by a single mother who had him at age 17. His father was in jail when he was born. Waiters attended four high schools and said his childhood was marred by the deaths of three cousins and his best friend. Brashness, he said, is a necessary survival trait in Philadelphia.

“It comes from my mom, my family and my dad,” Waiters said. “Philly brings that out in you. Philly is a different breed. It helped me with that, period.”

His mother, Monique Brown, calls Waiters a “momma’s boy” and said he often watches “The Lion King.” Waiters was born at 7:46 p.m. on Dec. 10, 1991. Less than four hours later, the grandmother who raised Monique Brown, Eleanor R. Brown, died.

“She was my inspiration, now he’s my inspiration,” Monique Brown said. “She didn’t get a chance to meet him. Right now she’s looking down on us.”

Waiters grew up on the playground, constantly coming home dirty and sweaty after long afternoons playing basketball. “Sunup to sundown,” his mother said. “He even shot in the rain or snow.”

Waiters committed to Syracuse heading into his freshman year of high school. He was never eligible to play that year, as he transferred from Bartram to South Philadelphia. Brown said that when he came home with stories of students’ walking out of the room during the middle of class, she knew he had to get out.

Waiters transferred to South Kent, a prep school in Connecticut, and he began crying when they pulled up to the school. He did so every night for two weeks.

Photo

Dion Waiters survived the streets of Philadelphia and a mercurial freshman year at Syracuse. Right now he may be the Orange’s best player.Credit
Jason Cohn/Reuters

“I cried every day to my mom,” he said. “She said: ‘Stick it out. Stick it out.’ ”

He made it through a year there, but when Coach Raphael Chillious left for a job with Nike, Waiters said he clashed with the new coach. He finished up at Life Center Academy in New Jersey, keeping his commitment to Syracuse the whole way through.

No one had ever questioned Waiters’s offensive game — least of all Waiters, who frequently refers to himself as a top 15 recruit. But there were questions about his attitude, his ability to win and his consistency.

Those questions became prominent during his mercurial freshman year, when he traded offensive ingenuity with defensive lapses. At one point last season, both Waiters and the Syracuse coaches were fairly certain they would part ways. Boeheim now denies that Waiters was close to leaving, but it was not a happy relationship.

“He had nothing to be frustrated about because he was 100 percent wrong,” Boeheim said. He added: “He played no defense last year. Not some. None.”

Both Boeheim and the assistant coach Mike Hopkins credited Brown for her work in keeping Waiters grounded. She said she made two emergency trips to Syracuse to calm him down, and said she took hundreds of phone calls while he vented his frustration. Hopkins said Brown worked with the coaches instead of demanding that her son get preferential treatment.

“I said, ‘Monique, if he runs, he’ll be running for the rest of his life,’ ” Hopkins said. “ ‘It’s not about his talent, he needs to learn how to work.’ ”

Toward the end of his freshman year, Waiters got into a treadmill routine with Ryan Cabiles, the director of strength and conditioning at Syracuse. Once Waiters began working out at a high level, instead of relying on his talent, everything changed.

“You go from wearing a long-sleeve shirt to short sleeve to a wife beater to no shirt,” Hopkins said of the physical transformation.

Waiters cut his body fat to 4 percent from 10 percent and dedicated himself on defense to the point where Boeheim said he was the team’s best defender at times this season. Waiters also agreed to come off the bench, as Boeheim told him there was no way he could start.

“If he goes to the N.B.A., he’s going to have to come off the bench,” Boeheim said. “He’s shown that he can come in and play. He’s also shown he’s a good teammate and he can handle doing that.”

Through the down times last season, Hopkins reminded Waiters of what he was working for. When he became frustrated over his fluctuating playing time, Hopkins would tell Waiters, “I want to be there when you buy your mom a house.”

Waiters says he plans to do just that when he reaches the N.B.A., and he credits his mother for making him stick through the tough times at Syracuse.

“She wouldn’t let me quit,” he said, “and I give her a lot of credit for that.”

Things are finally coming easily for Dion Waiters. And after a mercurial freshman season, the most difficult thing about him is matching up against him. Just ask him.

A version of this article appears in print on March 24, 2012, on page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: Orange Star Saving Clashes for Court. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe